Importance of generalized $\mu \tau$ symmetry and its CP extension on neutrino mixing and leptogenesis

Abstract

Within the framework of residual symmetry, two ${\mathbb{Z}}_2$ type associate $\mu \tau$ interchange symmetries robustly constrain the Dirac CP phase $\delta$ in a model independent way. Both of them predict simultaneous maximality of $\delta$ and the atmospheric mixing angle ${\theta }_{23}$. We show how these well known correlations will be changed if we generalize the $\mu \tau$ interchange symmetry to a $\mu \tau$ mixing symmetry. In particular, we show that the stringent condition of simultaneous maximality could be relaxed even with a very small departure from the exact $\mu \tau$ interchange. In addition, the present neutrino data on $\delta$ and ${\theta }_{23}$ can be explained better by the mixing symmetry. After discussing the impact of the $\mu \tau$ mixing in some realistic neutrino mass models, we show how the proposed mixing could be realized with two simultaneous CP transformations which also lead to novel and testable correlations between $\delta$ and the mixing angles ${\theta }_{ij}$. Next we discuss in particular, the `three flavour regime' of leptogenesis within the CP extended framework and show, unlike the ordinary CP extended $\mu \tau$ interchange symmetry, a resonant leptogenesis is possible due the generalization of $\mu \tau$ interchange to the $\mu \tau$ mixing and the resulting baryon asymmetry always requires a nonmaximal ${\theta }_{23}$ owing to the fact that the baryon to photon ratio ${\eta }_B$ vanishes in the exact limit of ${\theta }_{23}=\pi /4$. This is one of the robust predictions of this framework. The CP extended $\mu \tau$ mixing is also a novel example of a low energy effective model that provides an important insight to the off-diagonal terms of the flavour coupling matrix which have usually been neglected in literature to compute the final baryon asymmetry, in particular in the models with flavour symmetries.

Comments: 33 pages, 14 figures. Version accepted for publication in JHEP